Value America Revealed

in a full feature story in Sunday's Washington Post. VA was started by Craig Winn in Charlottesville, Virginia, as a no-inventory retailer with investors including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. It's IPO stock price closed at over $55 in April 1999 but now trades at just over $4. The article covers VA's short history up to today's efforts to recover as a viable company. VA's no-stock business model failed and nearly got VA killed off during the Christmas season with late-shipping orders from manufacturers and the ensuing quantity of returns and credit card charge backs. Readers may remember Macs Only!'s Dana Baggett's failed attempt to get an AppleCare Protection Plan contract from VA. It never shipped, meaning that Apple never sent it, either because 1) Apple was incompetent at filling an order from VA, 2) VA was inadvertently using the wrong part number (as VA claimed but NEVER cleared up for Dana before he canceled), 3) Apple wouldn't ship without being paid and wasn't or 4) Dana was using $100 free VA dollars so if VA completed the order it would lose more money in the midst of huge losses. Your guess is as good as mine. However, according to the article VA is doing the right things to stay in business and recover, i.e. changing management, cutting costs, focusing on only four product areas instead of 40 and going after primarily volume business and government sales.